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So, I received a new phone today and I am trying to ‘restore’ Microsoft Authenticator to the new phone. The restore is not working. At all. I did a search, and this seems to be a problem right now.

I didn’t immediately sign in and went to the “restore from backup” option and nothing ever restores…this is actually a showstopper.

Has anyone encountered this and if so, what did you do to fix it?

4 Spice ups
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I have found this to be a bit of a crapshoot myself.

I normally print out the QR code containing the private key and keep the hard copy in a fire-proof safe. This way, I can always just re-scan my QR codes on a new phone.

I think the only thing you can do is to disable MFA on whatever accounts you had in there using the old phone for MFA and then re-enable MFA for the new phone.
Be sure to make a backup copy as suggested above to avoid this problem in the future.

1 Spice up
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UPDATE - So I saw an option on my old phone that said SIGN IN TO UPDATE BACKUP…so I did that…went to new phone, restored backup and it worked. It is very quirky for sure. But it is working.

3 Spice ups
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Google Authenticator is a simple backup/restore. But Microsoft backup and restore only partially works. Any of the accounts with push tell you to complete the restore by scanning a new QR. This is NOT very useful if you are the admin and need to use the old device to login to each account so you can trigger a new QR for the new phone. It would be merely inconvenient for 1 or 2 accounts but I have 30+.

Has anyone been able to fully migrate to a new phone without having to toggle old an new phones in each account?

Thank you Microsoft for yet another non-billable day waister.